Is There Such a Thing as Equality of Value?

What price common sense when it comes to buying things? Can anyone explain to my satisfaction the way monetary value is placed on something?

Currently, UK£ 50 will buy a hardcover book, a poorly painted picture, or a week’s groceries. It will barely fill the petrol tank on a middle range car, even get you one night in a single room in a three-star hotel, or perhaps a piece of pottery.

I tend to watch a lot of the antique programmes currently available on the box here in the UK like Antiques Roadshow, Flog It, and even Dickinson’s Real Deal. Tell anyone about my watching the last one and I will deny it vehemently!

Often I see old tat like a rusty garden bench, or perhaps a worm-ridden butter mill, or yet another piece of nineteen thirties yawn-worth pottery by that woman Claris Cliff, being sold at auction for hundreds, even thousands of pounds. Why?

Some individuals spend the price of a modest house on their next car, or a four-wheel drive monster vehicle ill-suited for town use. Again why?

The brain-dead fashion conscious glitterati spend thousands on a couture dress – why? It’s just sewn pieces of cloth for god’s sake! You can bet that the browbeaten seamstress who worked all night sewing it doesn’t see the money.

We badly need some form of common sense to prevail when it comes to the whole concept of price. There is simply no rhyme or reason why we place a figure on an object, calling it its monetary worth.

Is there such a thing as equality of value? I think not. Don’t give me any of that old flannel about a thing is worth what the customer will pay for it. That is complete baloney and you know it! When we place a price on something, logic simply leaves the building.